Best-Laid Plans

September 12th was the day three years ago (2014) when a good friend passed away after what seemed to be a short illness (I say "what seemed to be" because I sometimes wonder if she knew more than she was telling). I had not been to the cemetery for quite a while and I decided that the anniversary date of her passing was a good time to remedy that and take some flowers to place on her marker. I had planned to go early in the day, but after doing the things that I needed to get done in the morning, I sort puttered around and did not make an early start and I didn't arrive there about 2:45 PM. There are no stand up headstones in the section where she is buried; rather all graves have flat markers. I always seem to have trouble finding her marker and this time was no exception. I walked out to the row where I thought it was and of course I was wrong. Walking back and forth to the left and to the right, I still could not find the marker. I decided to go back to the row where the markers began and start looking again. Before reaching the street and my car I heard a loud hissing noise and almost immediately was hit with a stream of water right in the face! For a moment I was stunned and didn't move. It was a hot day and the water actually felt good, but only for a moment when I realized I was about to be soaked. Large sections of the cemetery were being watered by large, oscillating sprinklers. Walking quickly I made it back to the road and my car where I stood for some time thinking that I would wait until the watering was done and I could resume my search. That assumption was wrong and after standing in the warm sun for a while, I got back in my car to wait it out. Fifteen minutes later the sprinklers were still going and I was getting a bit frustrated because I knew that traffic was starting to get heavy and it would take more time to get home. I was also disappointed not to be able to place those flowers on the headstone of a good friend. Instead I put the little bouquet at the edge of the grass. On the drive home I felt sad and a little bit bad for not coming sooner.  I also wondered why such a large section of the cemetery was being watered during the afternoon in the hours when people were visiting.

The best-laid plans...